Burning our money - US edition

"A vast government effort to bring oysters back to the Chesapeake Bay has turned out so dismally that it has the ring of a math-class riddle. How do you spend $58 million to get more of something and wind up with less of it?... Instead, official estimates show there are fewer oysters in the bay and fewer oystermen trying to catch them".

And let's give a big hand for the most feeble attempt at weaseling seen so far this year:

"I wouldn't use the word 'failure.' We obviously have not achieved the restoration response that we had hoped for," said Thomas O'Connell, director of the Maryland state fisheries service".